Rumor: Microsoft to buy Nokia

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Microsoft has been busy buying companies lately, but this purchase would blow all of their previous ones out of the water. According to a post on Twitter by Eldar Murtazin, the Russian technology blogger who’s managed to scoop the media before with his insider sources at Nokia, Microsoft is planning a bid for Nokia’s mobile division. The total cost: $30 billion.

Murtazin isn’t just some blogger with wild ideas. His sources have been right in the past, and he was the first to break the story that Nokia was going to side with Microsoft over Google for Windows Phone 7 instead of Android. He was also the man who shocked the tech world with the assertion that only 674,000 Windows Phones were sold during the first quarter they were available, calling it a “total failure.”

If Murtazin is correct, Nokia would leave the mobile phone business entirely, and Microsoft would pick up its mobile unit and start manufacturing Windows Phones using Nokia hardware and technology. If you’re shocked or simply don’t believe it, you have good reason to be skeptical.

After all, Microsoft just shelled out $8.5 billion – the most it has for any single acquisition in its history – to buy Skype. They already have a partnership with Nokia worth over $1 billion to provide Windows Phone 7 to Nokia’s next generation of smartphones, when they’re announced. Even so, some people point to Microsoft’s failed bid for Yahoo! last year for $40 billion as proof they’re willing to shell out big bucks if the opportunity is right.

Additionally, new Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is largely seen by Nokia fans as a Microsoft “plant” of sorts, softening up the company and giving Microsoft more influence from the inside. Elop did indeed work for Microsoft at one point, but whether or not his loyalties are to his current or former employer are probably less important than the question of how well such a large deal would work in the long run.

Naturally, Microsoft and Nokia both refuse to comment on the matter at all.